Magnusson sat forward, elbow on knee.
‘Surely he must have expected to be found out?’ I went on.
‘Not necessarily,’ Magnusson said. ‘The Brits keep membership of it a secret, don’t they? What about the other team members?’
‘Three of them were in regiments of some kind. But I’ve got my doubts about all of them. They claim to have engaged Heinrich Karremans in an online sting operation, but is that likely, given that Karremans is in China? Who in their right mind would engage in that kind of activity online there, in the ultimate surveillance state?’
‘Who in their right mind would engage in that kind of activity anywhere, these days?’
‘Hold on.’
I walked out of the heat and stepped into the plunge pool outside, gasping. For a moment I just sat there, the icy water needling my skin. Better.
I leapt out again and returned, dripping cool water.
Magnusson continued: ‘The guy I called in Kripos has good contacts in military circles, too. Give me the names of these other team members – let me have him run them.’
I persuaded myself that these were entirely different systems to the Dutch ones, and that there would be enough degrees of separation involved. In order to make the request more reasonable, I decided to give him just the names of the core team members to begin with – Boomkamp, Vermeulen and Engelhart.
‘I’ll write them down for you when we get outside.’
My skin was already burning again, all the way up my back. ‘By the way, does the expression beau soleil mean anything to you?’
‘No.’ Magnusson’s brow creased. ‘Should it?’
‘Just a saying they use around the squad room.’
He shook his head. ‘People say the strangest things. Do you remember that other Dutchman on our training intake?’
‘Who? Johan?’
‘No, I don’t remember his name. But do you recall that saying of his? About not staying in any place longer than the time it takes “for the fish to start smelling”, or something?’
‘Cas?’
‘That’s right,’ Magnusson said. ‘He didn’t seem to have received the memo that we were up in Bardufoss for the season.’ He laughed heartily. ‘The winter season.’
‘In fact, he graduated to the KMar.’
The KMar – the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee – is our royal protection service.
‘You see? All’s well that ends well.’ Magnusson clapped me on the back, making me wince. ‘Relax now. You need to save your strength for the fishing tomorrow. It will be rough out there on the water, and that’s a promise.’
*
The following day, there was indeed a powerful swell off the Skagerrak coast. We met beside Magnusson’s twenty-one-foot wooden skiff in Stavern harbour. The halyards of the other boats clanked noisily as we climbed onboard. Magnusson fired up the trusty Faerd inboard engine, and off we puttered towards the offshore Svenner Lighthouse. He’d set his lobster pots near it.
The dark sea rose and fell precipitously. The Baltic currents running around the Norwegian coast keep the sea clean and ensure that the lobsters caught here are among the most highly prized in the world, especially when consumed au naturel. But those same currents mean that you have just minutes to live if you end up in the water. There’s no waiting around for the rescue boat.
My bomber jacket suddenly felt highly inadequate.
‘I just heard back from Odd,’ Magnusson called over the throbbing of the four-horsepower engine. ‘My contact at Kripos,’ he reminded me. ‘About the men on your team.’
I suppressed a comment about the Kripos man’s Christian name. ‘What did Odd learn?’
‘I don’t know yet. He’s just waiting to finish his shift so that he can communicate more openly.’ Magnusson himself was distracted, trying to get the measure of the currents. Long waves can travel all the way up from the English Channel, moving terrifically fast and only revealing themselves as they break over submerged rocks. It’s a question of reading the ever-changing light and dark surface patterns, and feeling the sea’s energy.
I was speculating about what Magnusson’s contact had discovered when the boat dropped a metre or so in the water. My stomach flew into my mouth and there was a hollow boom before the hull rose again. The Humminbird echo sounder could only tell us what was directly beneath us; it couldn’t show us what lay ahead.
The bow kept climbing skywards, the horizon slanting at an alarming angle. I licked the salt water from my lips.
‘Wouldn’t it be easier to buy lobster at the local supermarket, Olaf? They’re in season, you know.’
Magnusson chuckled. ‘What, let you Dutch rid us of our “sea monsters” once more?’ He was referring to my canny fellow countrymen, who had offered to remove these creatures for free back in the seventeenth century, depicting them as a threat.
The unusual yaw of the boat was making my stomach turn.
Magnusson forced a grin. ‘What’s the matter, Henk? Getting a little seasick? I thought you were made of good mariner stock. Anyway, how I am supposed to keep my Norse spirit alive, shopping in supermarkets?’
Ah yes, the fabled Norse spirit. How they like to nourish the hunter part of themselves up here. It isn’t unusual for Norwegian men to go off for days at a time, alone, into the wilderness. Is that what had drawn Karremans to Norway? The remoteness, the hunting spirit?
We were approaching an area known as Rakke – an old word for the submerged rocks here. Like the coastal hills just visible on the horizon, the rocks are relatively smooth – seductive-looking, even. Excellent for setting pots against, and for trapping the kind of fish and other sea matter that make good lobster feed, lobsters being night creatures, of course.
‘So how’s life?’ Magnusson asked. ‘How’s the wife and daughter?’
‘Could be better,’ I replied.
‘Could, or couldn’t?’ he clarified over the strengthening wind.
‘Could.’
‘Want to talk about it?’
I shrugged and sighed, then summarised the umbrage that Petra had taken at my job. ‘But it’s not just that,’ I said loudly. ‘It feels like everything’s changing.’
‘How so?’
I could tell from the surface patterns that the water was moving faster. The shore was a grey line, the lighthouse ahead a needle.
‘“Loss” is how I’d mostly describe it, Olaf. Loss of time, opportunity, loss of years ahead of me… loss of a pain-free existence and even a solid night’s sleep without having to get up and take a piss every three hours.’
Magnusson chuckled in agreement.
‘Loss of memory and mental clarity, even…’
Was it the lighthouse ahead, or a metal pole sticking out from a submerged rock? A cormorant settled on it to dry its wings, deciding the matter finally. ‘And what scares me is that I’m being changed, in ways I don’t like or understand.’
Magnusson said nothing, opening up a space in the conversation for me to fill.
‘Petra’s concern is well-founded, in part at least.’ It felt good to get this off my chest, get it out in the open. ‘The other day, someone showed me an image of a girl online. Sixteen years old she was. Almost forty years my junior. A third younger than my daughter. And I felt aroused.’
‘Then at least you feel something,’ Magnusson said, scanning the dark sea surface, presumably for marker buoys.
‘But it made me wonder: is that how abusers start out? How the spiral down begins?’
Another memory, from earlier in my career: To catch the bad guys, you must think like bad guys. Some part of you must become them…
Magnusson was shaking his head firmly. ‘For abusers, it’s all about power… about getting the power they lack. That’s never been you, Henk. And nothing you’ve shared today suggests otherwise.’
I’d been prepared to believe this about Jan Stamms, the paroled offender in Liège – about powerlessness being at the base of it all.
‘But what about Karremans?’ I asked. ‘Surely the Rijksbouwmeester of Holland has power?’
‘It may be that his type feels the loss of power most acutely of all, as they age. That, again, isn’t you.’
‘Are you sure? Think about what I just told you. I’m more and more aware of my mortality.’
‘As am I,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a decade on you, remember.’
I felt bad for talking in such a self-centred way. I felt sick, too, for the first time ever in a boat. It was the unusual, persistent twisting of the hull as it cut across the currents. I could see orange and yellow marker buoys; we were approaching the pots – and the metal pole sticking out of the water.
‘You can look at it in one of two ways,’ Magnusson was saying, sitting up on the starboard side of the boat, one hand still on the wheel, his craggy face silhouetted. ‘You can think of yourself becoming older – or becoming an elder. Of losing physical power – or gaining something in your soul. Losing physical vitality, or gaining wisdom and the ability to help others… Here’ – he suddenly sat up taller – ‘could you take the wheel for a moment?’
I did so, watching him roll up his sleeve and reach in for the current buoy – a white-painted two-by-four, all but submerged; it showed which way the current was running. Strongly to the starboard side, it indicated.
The waters rode up furiously around Magnusson’s wrist as he felt it. I steered hard to port.
The current buoy was attached to a marker buoy by a long section of floating rope; the marker buoy in turn was anchored by the heavy lobster pot. It was important that the boat didn’t cross the line of the floating rope.
‘It’s the two-way pull in us all,’ Magnusson was saying. ‘Loss, gain. Weakness, courage. It all depends what you choose to tap into. Just like with the tides –’
‘Shouldn’t we focus on the task at hand?’ I interrupted him. The wind was getting louder. We were entering a place of converging currents.
I could feel the bile rise in my stomach. The boat was being rolled like a stick. Magnusson vomited; I followed suit, over the side, heaving it up from the tips of my toes.
Better.
But the metal pole was approaching fast. I needed to steer more to port.
Suddenly, one of our phones trilled. It surprised me that there was even coverage. It was Magnusson’s.
‘Hello?’
I was about to rebuke him for taking the call when he said, ‘Odd, we’re just hauling in lobster pots.’ He switched the phone to his other hand so that he could keep a firm hold of the rope. ‘What’s that? A NATO regiment?’ He shot me a warning look. ‘Let’s talk later, now’s not a good time.’
‘What is it?’ I called over the wind. Sea spray lashed at us.
‘They were all in the same NATO regiment – the names you gave me.’
Had Boomkamp, Vermeulen and Engelhart served together?
The world tilted. ‘Olaf!’ I warned as we pitched down into a watery dark canyon and rode up again as fast. If we hit a rock that way, the wood-panelled hull would shatter like a toy.
‘Where’s the rope?’ I yelled. It occurred to me that the hull might, of itself, be causing the waves to break. We were suddenly drenched, head to foot.
Magnusson had his phone in one hand, but no rope in the other.
‘Where the bloody hell is it?’ I shouted over the wind.
‘Steer to port!’ he cried, stowing his phone in his inside pocket. But we were turning the other way, in a place where the currents met, and the engine had slowed. With dread I sensed why – the rope was wrapped round the propeller.
‘Don’t cross the line of the rope!’ he yelled. ‘Kill the engine!’
‘Too late!’ I shouted about the rope, fighting my urge to retain the motor’s power, feeling my voice rise as the water lifted us up higher than seemed possible. There was a vertiginous moment as we slunk back down, just twenty metres or so from the metal pole. I wiped the stinging salt water from my eyes. The black cormorant was still sitting there. Jesus, this was dangerous.
‘We need to cut the rope,’ I yelled, leaning over the stern to try to see the propeller. The underside was being lifted clear out of the water, but all I could see was tangled rope. ‘You got a knife?’
‘What?’ Magnusson said, coming alongside. His knuckles blanched as he gripped the top of the hull.
‘Knife!’ I cried out.
Another wave broke into the boat, almost sweeping the bone-handled blade from his free hand.
‘If I was thirty years younger,’ he shouted over the shrieking wind, ‘I’d dive into that damn water and free the rope properly!’ His face was dripping wet.
‘No longer fit enough, eh?’
I shredded the rope on one side, then the other.
‘Not stupid enough,’ he replied.
I restarted the engine, barely letting the clutch out and trying to play with the pitch of the propeller as my feet slipped and slid.
‘There will be some nice six-pounders left in that pot,’ Magnusson complained.
‘They won’t be going anywhere if they’re wise.’
Some rope must have remained wrapped around the prop shaft, because I could barely get enough revs out of the engine to steer us across the face of the rock marked by the metal pole. For an agonising moment, the boat was stationary, fighting the current.
Magnusson was looking at his phone. ‘Odd sent me a text,’ he shouted. ‘About this NATO regiment. Your three men were in it in 94 and 95. NATO Headquarters in Brussels.’
Belgium, again. ‘Could you hand me that phone?’ My own phone had no coverage. ‘I think we should call the coastguard.’
‘In Stavern?’ Magnusson looked shocked. ‘Admit that we’re in trouble out here?’
‘They must be used to sailors getting into trouble on Rakke.’
‘Not these sailors.’ He sounded appalled. ‘Are you mad?’
I gestured at the inboard engine. ‘Well, you try getting more out of this beast!’ Water was swilling around the bottom of the vessel.
‘Just give it more revs…’
I did, adjusting the pitch once more.
Yet another wave broke over the hull. The amount of water in the boat was concerning me as much as anything now. And then a current suddenly pushed us away from the rocks. As quickly as we’d got into trouble, I was able to use it to navigate away from them. We were being swept along in the coastal current.
It took another half-hour to get close enough to the shore to be able to double back beside it to Stavern, the engine reluctant, the propeller seriously down on power. By the time we limped home, the engine was practically running on fumes, it was so nearly out of fuel.
‘That’s what you get when you cross the line,’ Magnusson rued.
9
IJBURG
The NATO regiment that Boomkamp, Vermeulen and Engelhart had formed part of in the mid-1990s sounded like a specialist unit. Once again, I was left wondering why Rijnsburger or the justice ministry hadn’t briefed me about this. I’d gone to Norway looking for information about Heinrich Karremans (and the solace of Olaf’s friendship); I’d come back with something else altogether to ponder.
Back in Amsterdam, the houseboat was empty – Petra gone, the place eerily quiet, the void all-enveloping. There was no reason to delay my return to Driebergen… apart from one other curiosity I needed to satisfy.
I jumped on a number 26 tram and rode the straight, fast line out to IJburg, where Karremans lived and worked. The series of reclaimed islands was still being developed. I wondered about the value of the contracts involved; it must have been a lucrative enclave for Karremans Architectuur. IJburg was a showcase, of sorts, for Holland’s
worldwide leadership in dredging. The city had fought a long-running battle against environmental interests – a majority of voters had been against the construction, but an insufficient number of votes was cast, so it had gone ahead anyway. There were now political reputations staked on IJburg succeeding, and I couldn’t imagine the city fathers being too cost-sensitive at this point. All of the buildings were new, the roads and street furniture, too; even the people looked altered – toughened – by their environment, like suburban pioneers. Welcome to the windy and watery city, their hard-set expressions announced.
I checked the address that Stefan had given me and alighted on Steigereiland, the island just before IJburg proper. Crossing the arterial IJburglaan under rolling grey clouds, I registered just how desolate the place was. The words of Gert at De Druif came back to me: Why do we keep building places that people don’t want to live in? There was no collar on my bomber jacket to turn up, but I’d pulled on a flat cap – partly for warmth, mostly for disguise.
The ring road hummed to the west; a line of giant electricity pylons marched through the marina-style complex of expensive houses before me. The residences here were modular, rectangular-shaped units arranged into streets built over the water. These streets were in fact perforated metal gangplanks. Most of the houses had dinghies or sailing craft moored alongside, and a personal touch, too (the odd flower box, an occasional wind chime). I was making for the cluster of structures at the far corner. That end of the marina felt devoid of life – I could see no one else around – and yet I was aware of someone else in the vicinity.
Had Rijnsburger and the AIVD already initiated surveillance on Karremans?
I stopped suddenly and leaned against a railing, glancing from side to side – a basic countersurveillance move. I still couldn’t see anyone. It may have been the ever-shifting patterns reflecting off the water that had created the sense of movement.
My phone was ringing: Stefan.
‘Morning,’ he said. ‘How was your weekend?’
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